Word: girishbhai
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...bright side, practically every other kind of aid has been pouring into Gujarat?food, water, blankets, tents, volunteers. More than any previous natural calamity, the earthquake has sent Indians everywhere into a frenzy of giving. The trucks streaming past Girishbhai's kitchen bear the license plates of 20 different states. (I counted.) Every religious group you can name has a camp and kitchen in and around Bhuj. Even Tibetan refugees have pitched in. Some folks have gone overboard in their generosity. There is a surplus of used garments, sent by the truckload from all over India. Just outside Bhuj...
...outskirts of Bhuj. Not an instinctive volunteer-type, I have no idea why I'm here, just that those images on TV and in the papers demanded more than the routine cash-and-clothes donation. But there's not much time for introspection at the kitchen, run by Girishbhai, a small businessman. We serve two meals daily to quake survivors from nearby camps, anywhere between 150 and 450 people a day. After a couple of days, I realize I'm avoiding conversation or eye contact with the people we're feeding: I don't want to hear any more stories...
Sumati and Karsanbhai, encamped near Girishbhai's kitchen, are still waiting to hear from their 20-year-old son Vinod. He had left their home in Bhuj a few minutes before the quake struck, but there has been no sign of him since. Is he in another camp? Did he flee to his sister's home in Surat, to the south? Is his body lying lifeless under some mound of bricks and stone?or was it dumped, unrecognized, on a funeral pyre, like thousands of others? The couple, small and frail in their mid-fifties, are trapped somewhere between hope...
Private memories are a different story. I get a final glimpse into Gujarat's wounded psyche on my last night at Girishbhai's camp. Most of the people?mainly slum dwellers?seem in good spirits. Women gossip and giggle as they help the volunteers cook up a fresh batch of khichdi, a nutritious mixture of rice and lentils. The men are kept in splits by a barber's risqu? jokes. "Our homes were not worth much, so it will be easy to rebuild them," says 60-year-old Haji Aftab. "We feel sorry for the rich and the middle-class...
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